Reubinon Beach.
Reubinon Palace, Pellarmus.

I sprang up from where I'd been sitting next to Leighton. My sudden movement caught Cohen's attention and he turned towards me; his brows raised with alarm. "What? What's wrong?"

I started to walk away, needing to pace out this sudden energy, sudden shock, but Leighton took hold of my ankle with his hand. His grip wasn't tight, just enough pressure to get my attention. I pulled away from him, trying to keep my voice quiet as I said, "Viera. Are you kidding me? You said your goddess-touched girl tried to run."

He wrote quickly, his hand shaking as he said: She did.

"You're a damn fool. Or a liar, I'm not sure which. But there's no way she never ran from the Culling. She slaughtered everyone. She wanted the throne and she took it."

He shook his head, the motion sharp. He wrote. She ran. Was caught.

"You said she died in the Culling."

Again, Leighton shook his head. I said she died. And she did. I didn't say when.

I jabbed a finger towards the ocean, towards Erydia and the grave I knew held Viera Warwick. "She killed innocent people. She won the Culling by ruthlessly massacring her entire Culling pool. She killed the royal family out of spite. Everyone knows that."

Lies, Leighton wrote.

Just then, Cohen walked over to us. "What's going on?"

I shook my head. "Tell him," I said to Leighton. "Tell Cohen who the hell you really are. Tell him the truth."

Leighton's face fell and he glanced up at Cohen, then back to me.

He wrote: I'm no one.

"Liar."

"Monroe," Cohen said, his voice sharp with worry. "Calm down. Just...Will one of you tell me what's going on?"

I hadn't realized just how upset I was. This shouldn't be so alarming and yet, it was nearly earth-shattering. Nothing about this made sense. Leighton couldn't have loved Viera. She was like Larkin. Aside from maybe Caine, she was the worst person I knew. She was a snake. Wicked. Terrible. Unworthy of love. If someone as kind and gentle as Leighton had loved her, then he was no better than she was.

He wasn't trustworthy either.

"Tell him," I said again, my voice quieter, more pleading.

Leighton's shoulder's slumped and he nodded to me and then to Cohen.

I shook my head. "Why should I have to do your dirty work for you?"

Leighton tapped a finger to his lips and then pointed to me. He wrote: Too slow. You tell him.

"Tell me what?" Cohen demanded. "Seriously, what the hell is happening?"

"Leighton loved Viera. She's the girl he was in love with. She's the girl he ran away with."

Cohen blinked at me, surprise making his features turn young—boyish. His mouth fell open, his bottom lip trembling slightly as he fought for words. Finally, he breathed out one word —"What?"

"It was Viera," I said again. "The girl in his story. The one who he tried to run away with. The reason he ended up mute and in the workcamps—it was her."

Cohen's eyes moved to Leighton and he took a sharp step back. "She—That isn't—My mother was—" He shook his head. "That doesn't make sense. Why would she have put you in the workcamps? If that's true, if you were a couple or whatever, why would she have done that to you?"

Leighton looked around; his expression pained. I could tell he just wished for the ability to speak—to say all that he wanted to say. But he couldn't. The person who understood him best, who could be his voice, was gone. Inara was dead and he could only communicate through barely understood signs and written words, neither of which were fast.

His teeth were clenched as he wrote the words: She didn't send me. He did.

Cohen opened his mouth, as if he were going to ask who Leighton meant, then he understood. "My father sent you to the workcamps?"

Leighton nodded.

"And—And he hurt you," Cohen said, his voice just the barest whisper. "Was he the one who had them—Did he have them take your tongue?"

Again, he nodded.

"Did she know?" Cohen asked. "Did my mother know they did that to you?"

Leighton wrote: Yes. She knew. She saw.

Cohen's face paled and his brows rose with surprise. "She saw them do that?"

No after. She saw me after, Leighton wrote. He paused for a second, considering something before he continued: She saw at the dinner.

Cohen looked at me and for a moment, we held each other's gaze. He been the one to tell me about Viera's Culling. I hadn't known her history, but he had. He'd told me how she'd brutally killed everyone in her Culling. It wasn't a secret. Everyone seemed to know how she'd struck out and killed everyone in the royal family. She'd been terrible and wicked and—

It was an accident.

I blinked down at the words Leighton had written. He pointed to them before he looked between Cohen and me. His expression was so earnest, so open and vulnerable, that I was faced with the realization that he had no reason to lie about this. Leighton had no motivation—nothing to make him change the narrative. And yet he was.

And even if I wanted him to be lying, I could tell he wasn't.

He hurt me. Hurt her. Leighton swallowed and erased those words. He inhaled a deep breath and wrote: He brought me to the dinner. Taunted us. She had bruises. She was broken. Abused. He took her ring. I lost control. Then she lost control. People died.

He looked up to Cohen, those green eyes shining with restrained emotion. Leighton seemed to wait, his breath held, for one of us to call him a liar.

When neither of us spoke, he wiped away the words and wrote: An accident.

Cohen ran a hand through his hair, his eyes falling shut as he sucked in a shaky breath. When he opened his eyes again, they were hard—a shield against all of this. "My father said she—"

Leighton made a sound, a sharp, angry noise. He wrote one word: Liar.

Cohen swallowed. "She killed his entire family."

He pointed back to the words: An accident.

The prince took a step back, his fingers still threaded through his hair. After a second he moved forward again, his words filled with a new passion—as if he believed he'd found a loop-hole, something that could disprove everything Leighton was saying. "Why would she have left you in the workcamps? After she became queen, why would she have left you there?"

Leighton pursed his lips. He shrugged and wrote: Don't know. He seemed to weigh his thoughts before he wrote the words: He said he would tell her I was dead. Maybe she believed him.

Looking at Leighton, I was reminded of a million tiny moments—little memories of conversations I'd had, things I'd learned. At the time, I hadn't quite understood. Of course, I'd known Cohen was questioning his parent's relationship, but when my mother had suggested that perhaps Larkin was a scaith—born with an ability that wasn't meant for her—and all because Viera had been raped...I hadn't really believed it.

Viera was supposed to be wicked. She couldn't have been a victim, not when she was the monster in my story. Not when she was the worst person I'd ever known. Not when, by all accounts, she'd been a neglectful mother who had possibly poisoned her own children.

But looking at Leighton and the passion in his expression, the certainty in his posture as he wrote the words, He hated her—I knew that it was true. Cohen had said the same thing once. He'd agreed that his parents had loathed one another. Even he believed his childhood had been mostly a sham. That his father had been hurting his mother behind closed doors. But Cohen had believed the king's hatred for Viera was well-deserved. She'd killed his family in cold blood, after all.

But maybe that wasn't the story. Maybe that's not what happened.

For months, Cohen had been questioning and wondering and trying to remember the truth. And now here Leighton was, confirming those shadowed memories. He was offering up a totally new version of things.

I barely heard myself speak as I said, "What ring?"

Cohen glanced at me. "Ring?" he repeated, confused.

I nodded to Leighton. "You said he took a ring from her."

Leighton pursed his lips and wrote out the words: A gift I gave her. Larkin has it now. She wears it.

I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to keep my breathing steady as the pieces all fit together in my head. Suddenly, everything made some terrible form of sense. Each tiny shard of memory, each disjointed fragment of story slid together—a mosaic that I wished I could look away from.

Anna had believed Caterine had been given an heirloom of Viera's by the king. Anna had said that the ring must have meant something very important to Viera—something worth killing her over. Like a ring given to her by a boy she believed had been tortured and killed for the sake of loving her.

Viera had killed Caterine for Leighton's ring.

That damn onyx ring she'd always made Cohen kiss, especially when the king was watching.

I wrapped my arms around myself and looked out towards the horizon. It was oddly smooth, impossibly calm considering how untamed the shoreline was. I wondered what Kai would say if he were here. This was the missing piece to his past—a history filled with a loss he couldn't fully understand.

I said none of this to Cohen. It didn't matter. What happened to Viera's ring after his father had taken it wasn't important. It held no real consequence to Cohen's life, which was so strange when compared to how life-altering it had been for Kai. He'd been raised in Vayelle with Caine and Anna, and all because his mother was dead over a piece of jewelry.

That story had always been terrible to me. I'd believed Viera was wicked and horrible and petty. And now I was surprised to feel pity for both women in this story. Caterine hadn't deserved to die for a ring, but if what Leighton was saying was true, then Viera had been pushed to do the things she'd done. She'd struck out at an abusive man and Caterine had been collateral damage.

"Damn," Cohen muttered. He sighed and shook his head. "I—I'm really sorry. I don't know what to do with this information."

Leighton didn't hesitate to write: Nothing. Nothing has to change.

"It feels a little like everything's changed," Cohen admitted.

Leighton nodded. He glanced over to where Heidi stood a few yards down the beach from us. She'd abandoned her target practice and now sat staring out at the ocean. When he looked back to Cohen, his expression was softer, more concerned. He erased his previous words and wrote: She was my best friend. I loved her. He pursed his lips and continued, But I know my memory of her is not the same as yours.

Cohen rubbed at the back of his neck. "I wish I could remember her the way you do. I wish...I wish that she'd been a friend to me. I wish I'd really known her. There's a lot I don't understand. I wish—" he cut himself off and instead asked, "Wait. Were you angry when you found out I'd killed her?"

The question was so sudden, Leighton seemed to physically recoil from it. But he shook his head quickly, as if there was no question to it. When Cohen still seemed doubtful, Leighton wrote: My Viera died years ago.

The prince nodded. He opened his mouth to say something else but was cut off by Heidi.

"Hey!" She'd stood up from where she'd been on the beach and now was at the water's edge. Her hand was shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun as she stared out, towards the horizon. She turned to look at us. "There's something out there." She pointed to the empty skyline.

I walked over to her, trying to look for what she'd seen. I squinted but saw nothing but clear blue sky uninterrupted by clouds. Above us, the birds called to one another. I lifted my hand, trying to block the sun. "I don't see anything."

Heidi shook her head. "But...I saw something. Just there..." she pointed off towards the pier. The fishermen who had been there earlier were now gone, their baskets and poles gone with them. Heidi frowned and scanned the beach. "I swear I saw something. It was metal or maybe a dark wood. It moved quickly."

"Like a boat?"

She shook her head and lowered her hand from her face. "No. Not exactly."

"It could have been a fish or dolphin? I saw some of those this morning from my balcony."

"No...." Her cheeks were flushed from the sun and her blond hair stuck to her brow with sweat.

"Maybe you've had too much sun today," I said lightly. "Let's head back and get lunch."

I turned towards the bridge, prepared to do just that, but then Heidi called for me again. Her voice was sharp, a warning, as she yelled my name. "Monroe!"

I spun, only a few feet from her now, and turned back towards the ocean—towards where she was pointing. The sun reflected off metal, blinding, and impossibly bright. I saw the blue of a painted flag, the flash of something—sharp and hot like fire. But it wasn't fire. I realized that too late.

I reached for Heidi only to find that she was reaching for me too.

My hand caught her arm just as something large hit the beach. Sand flew up around us. The world exploded. And my vision went black.

My ears rang as my consciousness began to flicker back in shocking waves of terror—the metallic taste of blood coated my mouth as I pushed myself up from the ground and scurried backward on my hands and knees. Around me, the beach was in chaos. Sand flew up in little fountains as things—bullets, I realized—whizzed past me.

Someone was shooting at us from the water.

For a moment, I was frozen, terror keeping me locked in place. This was a nightmare. It was a terrible dream.

My eyes found the horizon again—saw that same flash of bright fiery light from before. Like fire, but not. Warm and angry and hot and terrible. Something deep in my bones connected the dots and shoved me backward, deep into blocked out memories of Linomi and the bombs.

I saw the wreckage and Kai lost amongst it all.

The next bomb landed further down the beach, closer to where I knew Cohen and Leighton must still be. I moved back, trying to get away, trying to figure out what to do. I felt that flood of warmth and that spark. In an instant, I ducked down into the sand, trying to cover my head with my hands. Half a second later, another explosion shook the ground beneath my feet.

There was another shower of sand and a rainstorm of bullets.

I turned, still half-buried in the sand, and searched blindly for my friends. I found Heidi first. She was kneeling a few feet away from me. Blood ran in rivulets of bright red down her face—like ribbons. It covered the scar Caine had left. It matted in her hair, made her green eyes seem like gemstones. Those eyes were wide were terror as she caught sight of me.

A child. Goddess, she looked like a child.

Heidi winced as she pushed herself up onto her feet. She ran for me just as I moved for her. We caught hold of each other, our momentum enough to push us up and keep us running.

She said something, a panting, breathless word. "Run!"

The palace was a mess of running people. Soldiers were heading for the beach. A black flag flew over the palace—the crisp fabric of it stark against the blue of the sky.

We'd almost made it to the edge of the bridge when something agonizing and sharp slammed into me from behind. For a split second, I didn't realize what had happened. I only felt white-hot pain—a pain that was blocked out by adrenaline and Heidi's unwavering grip on my wrist. I stumbled, but she kept us moving forward, even as my free hand pressed to my side.

My fingers slid against wet fabric. Each step throbbed. Pressure now, not pain.

Water, I told myself. It's wet from saltwater. From the ocean. From where I fell on the beach.

I didn't realize that the bridge was on fire until we were halfway across it. Heidi brought us to stop, her entire body shaking as she leaned onto the railing. We watched as flame crackled against wood. Behind us, the beach was still quivering with new explosions. Soldiers stood on the lawn across from us, their faces flushed and cast in orange from the flames. They couldn't get across. Many were running back to the palace, trying to get water to stop the flames. Others were climbing the high dunes on either side of the bridge and wading through the tall grasses there.

I pressed my hand to my side harder and willed my heart rate to slow. My mind was a scattered mess as I reached with invisible hands towards those flames, trying to push them down—to clear a path. Each tendril of fire was like barbed wire. It cut at my thinly veiled control. It grated against my own fear and uncertainty.

But it yielded to me.

The fire finally fell back, hissing to nothingness as it died on the blackened, splintering planks of the bridge. Heidi took hold of my arm again and then we were running—careening towards the palace and the line of soldiers still standing there. We'd almost made it when they lifted their guns at us, the glint of them like stars in the smoke-black air between us.

The men yelled for us to halt; the command clear to us even with the language barrier.

But we didn't stop running. Heidi was an arrow and she was aimed towards safety—towards cover—far, far away from the horrors of that beach. I knew she'd kill them all if they tried to stop us. But that was necessary. Within seconds someone caught a good look at us and yelled something else. The guns lowered.

Then we were there, being grabbed by strong hands and pulled behind a wall of soldiers and pushed back towards the palace. People continued to run past us, their bodies knocking us from side to side, but still Heidi and I did not let go of each other.

***

Welp, I'm not dead, but some characters might be. 👀😬😅

Hey, sorry for the delay. I literally got sick with Covid on New Year's Eve and spent the first two weeks of 2021 being very ill. Love that for me. Very on-brand. Unfortunately, this meant no chapters for you last week since I had zero energy for reading, formatting, and uploading. BUT I'm back! I've missed you all. I hope your first two weeks of the new year have been less hectic than mine.

If you enjoyed this chapter: leave this emoji 🐳 in the comments.

For more information on The Culled Crown series and other projects, follow me on Instagram (@briannajoyc) or check out my website (www.briannajoycrump.com).